This invention relates to providing announcements to subscribers in a telecommunication system, and more specifically relates to making announcements and collecting subscriber responses under the control of a service control point (SCP) in a telecommunication network.
Automatic call distribution (ACD) systems provide announcements typically as an introductory part of an automated call generation system. After the called party answers, a short prerecorded announcement may be played as a beginning portion of a promotional offer. Following the prerecorded announcement, an ACD agent normally is coupled to the call and seeks to obtain an acceptance of the offer being made. Announcements made by an ACD system are independent of the elements in the telecommunication system that support the calls placed by the ACD system.
Announcements have been made under the control of a service switching point (SSP, also referred to as a switch herein) in existing telecommunication systems. For example, a person placing a telephone call may hear the following announcement upon reaching a number that is not currently in-service: xe2x80x9cThis number is not in-service, please try your call later.xe2x80x9d This is an example of a triggering event giving rise to a service-based announcement. Typically such an announcement is generated in response to a telecommunication switch making a determination of a condition for which a predetermined announcement has been deemed desirable.
Promotional announcements are made to subscribers by service providers in an effort to provide extended services that generate additional revenue. Some service providers will provide the following announcement upon a subscriber originating a call to a telephone line that is busy: xe2x80x9cIf you would like to be automatically connected when your party is free, please press xe2x80x981xe2x80x99. A service fee of 75 cents will be charged to your account for this service.xe2x80x9d This is an example of a telecommunication switch causing an announcement to be made and detecting whether or not the subscriber has accepted the offer based on an input, typically a dual tone multifrequency (DTMF) entry from the subscriber.
In the prior two examples, a telecommunication switch provides the intelligence to make the initial determination of whether an announcement was to be made and controls the making of the announcement and collecting input from the subscriber. Although this method has proved serviceable, it has certain disadvantages. If a similar service is offered to a variety of subscribers served by a plurality of different switches, each of the switches has to be provisioned to provide such a service. If a change is desired in the nature of the service once the feature is deployed on the switches, the modification will have to be made at each switch supporting the service. Further, switch-based implementations of promotional offers for various clients become more complex to support where different clients desire different announcements to be made based on an event that is not unique to the client. Therefore, a need exists for an improved method for providing announcements to subscribers and collecting subscriber input in response to the announcements.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method for controlling announcements in a telecommunication system and monitoring for subscriber response to the announcements that substantially overcomes the above noted shortcomings.
In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a method is provided for implementing announcements to subscribers by a service control point in a telecommunication system. A trigger message received at the SCP includes the identity of the first subscriber. The SCP retrieves instructions associated with the first subscriber on playing an announcement. Based on these instructions, the SCP makes a determination of whether the announcement is to be played to the first subscriber. If an announcement is to be played to the first subscriber, a particular announcement is identified and played to the first subscriber. If input from the first subscriber is to be collected, the SCP receives the collected input in response to the playing of the particular announcement.